catz

I want this to be CR3. I am a bit sceptical though. Somehow big corporations always end up screwing up simple things because super-features become mediocrity in a committee. But if Canon is wise, I am really happy for them. It would be "Forget about Red Scarlet" then. I really really hope Canon can do it without screwing it up, from technical standpoint they should have all the capability to a hybrid camera that would even be better than Red One with Epic sensor. The only thing is to the product managers to let the engineers do what they are capable of.

I hope that video optimized means most importantly: good size reduction algorithm to both directions,no line skipping => no aliasing => no moire => true 1080p resolution instead of the current not so true 1080p. No optical antialiasing filter is needed, it can be all done with mathematics in real time given that there was enough processing power and low enough latency in reading the sensor to interpolate lines vertically and not only interpolate pixels horizontally (that the 5D apparently does atm, the aliasing problem is only to one direction).

The current compression algorithm with the current bitrate (even without raw video) would already provide stellar image quality provided that aliasing would not eat bits for representing fake details that actually do not belong to the scene but raw video would be even better. Of course raw might mean that raw video from HDMI out and recoding with external recorder. For practicality in mind, I would not like to do that most likely, I would be much happier if the camera would just record ProRes at 1920x1080/24p/25p/30p directly or higher resolution and frame rates, even better. For me it would not need to be more RAW than that (ProRes) since that is the format I am doing the editing anyway despite ProRes by no means is uncompressed. It is just compressed little enough to not suffer from problems. Arri Alexa reportedly records in this format, why couldn't Canon? Technically there would be nothing preventing. And it would not need to even be very expensive. The high price on "Professional digital cinema camera manufacturers" comes from low production volumes, and Canon does not have that problem. The rest may be organizational politics.

canon rumors FORUM

JLN

I'd love for this camera to be real, however if it were to surface I don't think it'd be a 1ds4. The MP count and form factor is suitable for the segment the 1ds series is targetting, i.e. the studio-based pro photographer.

Now, if these things made its way into the 5d3 on the other hand (and subsequently priced for the mortals) we'd be onto gold. It'd make sense too, the 5d2 changed the game with video on a DSLR, why couldn't/wouldn't the 5d3 do the same with some new video optimisations?

Lower MP + higher DR will square it off with the d700 nicely, all it needs is a higher FPS (which it'll get from lower MP + better digic chip) and hopefully better AF.

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kufucius

Flip, If it's true I'd be saying Hallelujah Praise the Lord!!I was hoping for such a body (at least just the "lower pixel full frame pro body" part) ever since Nikon chucked out their D3.Just hated any body that's non "1" after getting used to a "1" body, so EOS 5 is not an option to me @_@

Lee Jay

If Canon had spent $5 on market research, they would have discovered there is a massive market for a low megapixel/high iso performance professional hybrid DSLR.

Why does this myth persist? Bigger pixels in the same area may buy you marginally more dynamic range but they won't buy you better high-ISO performance. In fact, more pixels in the same area gets you better high ISO performance *for the same final image size*. That's the key and the source of the myth. People compare at 100% instead of at constant final size. Every test I've done shows that, per unit of area, the tiny 1.5-2 micron pixels in my compacts out-perform the huge 8.2 micron pixels in my 5D, and not by a small amount.

First example would be perfect for a aps-c camera.And you get real RGB-pixels in the video-mode, where as the pixels of the camera are only sub-pixels (Bayer-matrix).In fact it is sRAW.

Second example would be perfect for a full-frame camera.Although dividing by 3 is not possible with bit-shifting, and block of 3x3 don't contain the same number of R, G or B-subpixels (Bayer-matrix).

Finally a resolution of : 4 x 1920 by 4 x 1280Blocks of 4x4, can also be done with bit-shifting, would result in a 39,3 megapixel camera (full-frame).Compared to the 18mp aps-c 7D this could be done.And a sRAW of 9,8 megapixel is very good!

First example would be perfect for a aps-c camera.And you get real RGB-pixels in the video-mode, where as the pixels of the camera are only sub-pixels (Bayer-matrix).In fact it is sRAW.

Second example would be perfect for a full-frame camera.Although dividing by 3 is not possible with bit-shifting, and block of 3x3 don't contain the same number of R, G or B-subpixels (Bayer-matrix).

Finally a resolution of : 4 x 1920 by 4 x 1280Blocks of 4x4, can also be done with bit-shifting, would result in a 39,3 megapixel camera (full-frame).Compared to the 18mp aps-c 7D this could be done.And a sRAW of 9,8 megapixel is very good!

I see the first option probably being the most ideal for a 1st generation video-stills hybrid camera if it can handle it. One thing that must be taken into account is getting such a huge quantity of data off the sensors fast enough; using a 2x2 sampling matrix for pixel binning only lets you bin a pair of green pixels, R and B can't be binned without "cheating", so you're still scanning 75% of every pixel post-binning on the camera's 16:9 area. But you would get an R,B and binned G value for every 2x2 block, which eliminates the need for interpolation. Detail should be much higher than what you see now.

At 75% you're looking at pushing through numbers of 220 million pixels per second at 30fps and 177 million pixels per second at 24fps (rolling shutter would be horrid with today's sensors, the scanning process would definitely have to be sped up).

If you started cutting corners and cheated by say, scanning the R and B of only every other 2x2 group you could cut the required number of scanned pixels from 75% to 50%, producing numbers that are a little lower (118 million pixels/sec @24fps). You'd have to interpolate the missing R and B values, but that shouldn't be too hard since all the adjacent 2x2 blocks have them.

118mp/sec is still a lot but I believe the 7D dual processors can already handle those kind of numbers (a shame they kept the 5D's scanning routine). The sensor would have to be designed to handle the high heat buildup and the scanning process would have to be sped up quite a bit in order to avoid what would be horrible rolling shutter. By contrast the 5D should have to use about 72 million pixels per second for its video mode by omitting 2 of 3 lines (assuming the "bin & skip" routine I think is occurring is correct)

I'm not sure how a 3x3 binning routine would work but if the chip could be wired for binning up to 3 rows in differing patterns I don't see why it couldn't be done. Yes every 3x3 block would be unequal, with either 4 or 5 green pixels and either 1 or 4 R or B pixels but you'd still get a full RGB sampling from every block. After binning you'd be looking at a scan rate of 33% of your 16:9 cropped area. Panasonic MAY be doing something like that with its GH1 but it may be a more primitive routine.

Another option is using a lower mp sensor still and just do a full scan of all its pixels, demosaic and then downsample to 1080 to get your final output. From a video standpoint this is the most desirable option since the AA filter could be used and on Bayer sensors you get the best quality picture from oversampling and downsampling. But how many people would buy, say, a 5 or 6 megapixel camera that would surely not be cheap?

Finally you'd have to consider how to process such a huge amount of data. RAW would sidestep this but would require an insanely fast card to write it to. Another option that would be more affordable may be to have the highest quality mode (2x2 or full scan) available only for, say, 30 seconds. The data could then be unloaded into a large buffer and processed bit by bit (not in realtime). This is what the Casios do for their burst modes.